Usability-enabling guidelines

摘要

This doctoral thesis addresses the difficulties associated with building usable software. In particular, it deals with the open problem of providing users with artifacts that enable them to design and implement usability mechanisms, focusing on those that have high implications on software functionality. The artifacts we propose will be referred to as usability-enabling guidelines. Ultimately, usability design patterns and plug-ins will be the most relevant products of our contribution. Our results will be complemented with an estimation of the costs associated with the inclusion of each usability mechanism into software through the use of our artifacts.